The Advantages and Disadvantages of Flash Based Websites
Flash has gained immense web popularity because it provides a convenient way to let web sites include interactive and animated movies, which could not have been possible otherwise. In the beginning, Flash made its mark because it provides advantages in two sectors; animated banner ads and Flash intros. Web designers considered Flash to be the latest, and that having Flash projected them as better designers.
Even though Flash movies as ad banners continues because of a high click thru rate as compared to static gifts, there is a marked and continuing decline in their usage. There are several reasons for this, and are all connected to the relative advantages and disadvantages of using animated Flash movies as web-site intros.
One of the reasons for the decreasing popularity of Flash intros is because it fails to fulfill any useful purpose. It is simply an animated visual presentation of appearing /disappearing images and text messages from various parts of the screen with all the animation and interactivity actually serving no particular purpose, in many cases not ever succeeding in attracting the visitor’s attention.
Another disadvantage is that your homepage takes much more time to load when you use Flash intros. When you create a Flash intro, it surely has raster graphics, which increase the file size of the .swf file leading to a greater overall time to fully load your homepage. Now it would be too much to expect your time conscious visitor to keep waiting while your Flash intro gets loaded and then again go on to read your animated sales pitches. You know very well that had you been in the shoes of your visitor you would have just clicked out instead of waiting.
Embedding music and sound files in Flash intro movies increases their file sizes again leading to greater download time. Moreover, not every visitor is a music lover and even if he is, he may not like music forced upon him instead of being able to listen to what he prefers.
However, the biggest disadvantage of using a Flash intro is difficulty in being picked up by search engines, which cannot index text embedded in movies. It is also wrong to suppose that placing keywords in Meta tags or within HTML comment tags is going to overcome this problem as even an advanced search engine like Google faces problems indexing text and following links created in Flash movies.
All this is not to deny the advantages of Flash intros. If you use animation and interactive features properly, it certainly makes Flash catchy. Flash intros are a great way to thrill your visitors in case they have a lot of time on their hands. Another advantage with Flash intros is that if visitors are at a higher bandwidth or if they have time to let your intros to load you have a great opportunity to showcase your corporate objectives through a Flash intro as compared to a static page. It is also possible to build good interactive menus in a Flash intro. These menus tend to serve as excellent navigation guides for the site’s human visitors.
Albert
Use StumbleUpon To Generate Massive Traffic To Your Site
StumbleUpon is one of the biggest social networking sites. The innovative function in StumbleUpon is a special tool that allow surfers to expose sites related to theirs interest. Also participants have ability to thumb up or thumb down particular website, it’s simple rating. It can be a great free traffic opportunity for you as StumbleUpon is generating for me the most traffic over other social networking sites. In this article I would like to share with you most effective tools to gain more traffic from this site.
Where to start in StumbleUpon?
Go to StumbleUpon.com and register an account. Also install toolbar to your web browser for faster bookmarking. When you will install it you can go to your site and click icon I like it! It will open a new window where you can write your site review, tags.
What are the benefits of using StumbleUpon?
This social networking site can bring you massive traffic to your site in a very short period of time. The main benefits are: generate immediate traffic to your website, attract readers to your blog, free backlinks.
What kind of traffic can I get?
StumbleUpon can offer you very targeted traffic because of tags you place in reviews. It will reach people interested in topic that your site is about. The thing is that most stumble uponers spent no more than 10 seconds on you website. Proper and clean design can attract more people. Also you will get long term traffic, even from weeks in past.
How to increase subscribers using StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon have really big potential to do it over other social networking sites. The main things that will help you are: quality content, free bonuses with subscription, many comments under your blog posts.
How many visitors can I get daily?
It can vary but between 100 to few thousands is quite honest answer. There are many things that determine how much traffic you will get from one bookmark. When you will stumble a new site, certainly you will get much more traffic one time.
How to get more traffic from StumbleUpon?
First will be your rating, how many people thumbed up your bookmark. This is one of the most important factors. Your network in StumbleUpon also plays a key factor. More friends will help you get more exposure. Also not every user thumb up is counted the same, quality of user is important.
So to increase traffic you will have to get more other StumbleUpon users, also broad tagging can help you to get more traffic. Add more friends to your profile, comment other people bookmarks and participate in community. Write quality content on your site.
Albert
New Traffic Exchange BootScootinTraffic Beats Records
Ever hear that phrase? “Snooze you lose” Well yesterday was just such a day.
If you didn’t re-act quickly you missed out on one of the biggest traffic exchange launches to come along in a while. BootScootinTraffic was launched and exceeded my expectations. Within an hour or so of sending out the email they were launching and giving $5 to join, it was over, only 2 hours after the launch.
Hence the phrase, snooze you lose. Eight or nine hours after launch, member #1,000 joined.
Now they are offering $1 per referral if upgraded or 50 cents to free members, but that won’t last long either. That offer is until they reach 1500 members and its close already. With a Texas theme and a name like BootScootinTraffic, nothing less expected.
Now if you’re not familiar with Texas lingo, you may not know the term boot scootin? Let’s just say it’s related to dancing in cowboy boots and swiftly scootin around the floor.
By the way, there is a referral contest and grand prize is a pair of Cowboy boots and a Stetson hat and they don’t come cheap. The real stuff here!
Aside from all that, the traffic delivery is awesome, owner Sunny Suggs is committed and you will find this Texas size traffic exchange among the leaders very soon.
I had the pleasure of seeing this one developed and the marketing plans to launch, yet it still grew quicker than I thought possible. All I can tell you is that more is planned for further growth so if you wish to be a part of it, join now and see what I’m talking about!. Don’t snooze again, or you will lose.
Albert
The Key Ingredients Of An Effective Web Hosting Package
Today, if you look around the internet you can find lots and lots of web hosts. So much so that you may not know which web host to choose. It is important to make a right choice while selecting a web host because many factors need to be taken into account. It is important to make a right choice right from the start because it is very hard to move from one web host to another. As moving from one web host to another may require a significant amount of effort and a significant amount of money as well.
Customer Support
When choosing a web host one of the most important features that you must look at is customer support. Customer support can save you from a lot of trouble and probably some money as well. Customer support enables you to report a problem, or ask for help whenever you need it, that is why it is an important feature to have. If possible, try to make sure that your web host has 24/7 customer support. 24/7 customer support is needed because a problem may occur anytime, however you need to be careful to ensure that your web host does indeed provide 24/7 customer support. You can check if your web host has 24/7 customer support by contacting their customer support a few times to test them.
Disk Space and Bandwith
The next feature that you will need to look at is disc space and bandwidth. Disc space is the amount of space that is available to you. Bandwidth on the other hand refers to the amount of information that can be transferred. For example, if you have a page that is 75KB. Whenever some one views that page 75KB of you bandwidth would be used. There is no exact way to determine how much disc space and bandwidth you will need. It is impossible to determine how much disc space and bandwidth you will need because each persons needs is different from one another. A word of advice here is that don’t get tricked by web host that claim that they will provide 500GB of disc space and 2TB of disc space for $6.95. It is impossible for a web host to provide that kind of service at that kind of price because the cost of doing so will be much more than profit. If you see that a web host claim to give extraordinary amount of disc space and bandwidth than the particular web host is overselling. Overselling gives the ability to the web host to provide more disc space and bandwidth to their customer than they have, however if the web host runs out of disc space and bandwidth you will not get what you have been promised. So beware of web hosts with extraordinary claims especially if the price is at rock bottom.
Uptime
Another feature that you need to look at when choosing a web host is uptime. Uptime is important because if your website is not up no one will see your website. If no one can see your website what is the point of having a website at all. The amount of uptime that you are looking for is 99.9% uptime. 100% uptime although may seem good is not entirely good. 100% uptime may mean that the web host does not update their server or do regular maintenance which may result in sloppy server performance or even cause the server to crash. However 100% uptime is possible but only if the web host perform several complex procedures which may be very costly.
Operating System
One more feature, that you will need to look at when choosing a web host is the Operating System (OS) which is being used. Typically there are two types of OS which are used by web hosts on their server. The two types of OS are Windows and Linux. It is important to look at the OS because depending on the OS you can install different types of script on your web hosting account. Personally I prefer Linux based servers because Linux based servers are more flexible because Linux open sourced. Open source basically mean that people can modify the software giving Linux more flexibility and variety compared to Windows.
Expandability
The last feature that you need to look at when choosing a web host is expandability. Expandability is often neglected by people when choosing a web host. Expandability is basically the ability to expand. The ability to expand is very important because a web site will grow and when a website does grow it will demand for more resources. If the most powerful package of a web host is the one you need right from the start chances are that is not the right web host for you because you cannot grow anymore if you need to do so.
If you can’t make your choice, I recommend the hosting company I use myself:
All in all, always remember to look at customer support, disc space and bandwidth, uptime, OS, and expandability when choosing a web host.
Albert
Your Gmail Account Can Be Hacked. Here’s How to Protect It…
“A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas. Last week, Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL and use it for every action involving Gmail, not just authentication. Users who did not turn it on now have a serious reason to do so, as Mike Perry, the reverse engineer from San Francisco who developed the hacking tool, is planning to release it in two weeks.”
The solution is to set Permanent SSL in Gmail
1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Set ‘Browser Connection’ to ‘Always use https.’
4. Click Save Changes.
5. Reload Gmail.
Note: People with Gmail Notifier will need to download a patch here
Mobile/Firefox Users: I will make the immediate assumption that enabling permanent SSL will break all mobile access/apps and Firefox plugins. Edit: Palm T|X browser works, Palm TREO browser works, Gmail manager in FF3 works.
This is especially important for anyone using unsecured WiFi networks or anyone residing in buildings with unsecured networks. Although you may not know it, your wifi connection may jump on unsecured networks without your knowing. This has happened to me many times. This will put you at risk.
While you’re at it, update that password. And throw in a few weird characters and numbers. Something like ‘W@rri0rF0rum” goes a long way.
Albert
Choosing a Niche For Your Online Business
How to make $1000 a month online from scratch - Part 3 of 8
By now, your mind should be primed and ready for success after you’ve read “The Mindset” It’s time to take action and get started on building your new online business.
First, a little warning. This chapter, “The Idea”, is going to be fairly long and relatively detailed, so it’s time to turn off all distractions and set aside some time to go over this completely. I would recommend that you read it through from start to finish, then find some time to take the action outlined.
Some of you might be tempted to skim read and think you know it all already. This is a mistake. Something I’ve learned over the years is that the devil is in the details. This outline is a carefully crafted blueprint to create exponential effects. If you miss a step, you’re destined to have dramatically less success. So read through this part carefully.
The chapter covers two aspects. First, it introduces you to the business model I’m recommending for people who want to make their first $1000 a month online. It may be similar to what you’ve read elsewhere, but it’s more deliberate and calculated. So follow along carefully.
Second, this chapter will guide you on the selection of the right niche to apply this business model to. If you follow the steps outlined for this, it might take you a few hours. It’s fun stuff though.
I’m going to cover the business model part on a fairly high level without getting into lots of details. It’s more to put your niche selection in context. More specific instructions will follow in later weeks.
We’ll be digging deep with the niche selection part.
Let’s jump right into it.
THE BUSINESS MODEL
The business model I’m outlining is designed to take into account most people’s lack of resources. Specifically I’m talking about time, money and extensive expertise. It’s not really glamorous, but it works.
There are 3 levels to this business model. This model works within the context of a particular niche area. I’ll be using an example throughout for the niche of “Golf Putting.” We’ll be looking at ways to discover your own niche later in this chapter.
If you’re a visual person, this flow chart should help you as I explain it below.
The whole business model can be explained simply like this. It’s worth reading slowly.
We aim to attract website visitors who need help with a subject that involves a financial transaction (for example buying a product or paying for information to solve a problem). We provide solutions for these people in the form of useful information that pre-sells them into the right products for their needs. The products can either be other people’s products (via affiliate links) and/or your own products.
Many of you may think you’re doing that already. But you probably aren’t.
Remember how I discussed the 80/20 rule in “The Mindset” chapter? It applies here as well. Niche selection is critical. We want to focus on subjects that involve a financial transaction. We don’t want to focus on topics that lots of people search for information on, but rarely will engage in a transaction. I’ll expand on this later in the chapter.
Let’s take a look at the how each of the 3 levels in the business model work.
Content Level
The content level is the foundation for this business model. We’ll be setting up a website that has lots of good quality content that serves two purposes. The first purpose is to generate targeted traffic via search engines. The second purpose is to position you as an expert and to get people to trust you. If they trust you, they’ll trust your recommendations for other products and will be happier to buy the products you’ve created.
Both these purposes will be covered in more detail in following chapters, including exact instructions on the best ways to leverage these principles.
Traffic Level
Traffic is the lifeblood of your site. It’s important to remember that the word “traffic” is a poor way to describe what’s really going on. You need to remember that you’re referring to REAL people interacting with you. Always keep that in mind. It will help you connect more with your audience.
It’s everyone’s quest, no matter how big you get, to attract lots of targeted traffic. As I mentioned above, creating great search engine friendly content is a great way of doing this. Easily the best FREE method.
There are many other ways to attract free traffic other than via SEO (search engine optimization). I’ll cover what to ignore and what to focus on in a following chapter dedicated entirely to traffic.
Monetization Level
Once you’ve got targeted visitors to your site, you need a way to turn that into dollars. It’s often the trickiest part for people.
This business model has a 3 prong monetization strategy. The three prongs include:
Contextual Advertising. This simply means using Google AdSense to generate some pay per click income. This is likely to be your smallest monetization source. If your other two prongs are working well, you may be wise to ignore this prong all together.
Affiliate Sales. This is simply writing about good products in a fresh and enthusiastic way that pre-sells people towards purchasing. For example, you might review a particular putter model and provide honest and helpful advice. You’ll then want to find the cheapest online store for that particular model (that has an affiliate program) and direct people there for the best price.
They’ll trust you because you’ve given an objective review of the product, so they’ll be more likely to buy from you. If your review is high quality, you’ll also find other sites linking to you as well. Of course I’ll expand on this in the monetization chapter and give you the nitty gritty on making this work. I’ll also explain how you can do objective reviews without having to buy the product in the first place.
Oh… I’ll also be drumming into you information about what content to focus on following the 80/20 rule in that chapter as well.
Your Own Product. Now don’t freak out. Creating your own product is much easier than it sounds and it possibly could be the income stream that blitzes your $1000 goal. The way I recommend that you create this again fits into that 80/20 rule.
What I’ll be getting you to do is to find experts on your chosen niche. Write a really powerful set of questions that grills them on the subject they are an expert about, then interview them using those questions.
You’ll record the interview and then outsource the transcribing of these interviews. Write an intro paragraph and then again outsource the formatting and PDF’ing of the word document. Hey presto, you’ve just developed your first (of hopefully many) info products.
I’ll go into these processes in detail in a following chapter. For example, I’ll tell you how to get the interviews, what questions to ask, how to make your product high value and where to outsource the time consuming work for very low cost. I’ll also explain how you can easily handle the payment and delivery logistics as well. Yes… it’s going to be a pretty big chapter!
Now you understand the business model, you’ll have a more educated approach on selecting your niche. Let’s get into that.
NICHE SELECTION
This is an absolutely critical part to your success and should be given plenty of attention. Not so much that you get paralyzed, but enough so that you don’t paint yourself into a corner by picking a loser.
If you follow my selection process here, with a little luck you’ll pick a winner.
Brainstorming
The first thing you’ll want to do is brainstorm as many potential ideas for niches that would fit into the business model described.
Don’t worry about anything at this stage except for generating
ideas. Even if you have no knowledge at all about the subject, write it down.
Give yourself a week on this. I find that a week is long enough to get your subconscious involved, but short enough not to get bored or worse, paralyzed. I don’t mean a week of solid work. I just mean work at it here and there over the course of a week.
Here are some brainstorming strategies I use. I focus first on ideas that come to the top of my head.
You can do the same by asking yourself the following questions:
- What do I enjoy doing in my spare time?
- What conversations do I have with other people that interest me?
- What industries have I worked in before?
- What did I learn in each of those?
- What is something I’m interested in knowing more about?
- What do I know more about than most people around the world?
- Which experts do I have access to in my circle (family, friends etc.)?
- What problems have I solved for people before?
- What problems would I like to solve for people in the future?
You probably have a decent number of ideas for subjects by now. Nonetheless, we need to keep digging. Now remember that some subjects may be too big, or too small for our final niche selection. Don’t worry about that now. It will probably help if you group your smaller niches into sub niches to help clarify things.
You can keep expanding your list by getting active. Here are a few things I like to do once I’ve exhausted what I can think of off the top of my head.
- Go to your bookshelf and write down all the subjects you own books on.
- Go to your local library or book store with a pen and paper and write down book subjects that interest you that might fit into this business model. If someone has published a book on it, there’s a good chance that people are interested in the subject.
- Read the newspaper.
- Go to a news stand and flick through magazines.
- Go to www.boardreader.com and browse the popular topics.
- Go to Yahoo! Answers and browse the categories that interest you.
- Go to Google Answers and browse the categories that interest you. It doesn’t matter if it’s retired!
- Be constantly aware of people’s common questions and frustrations in conversations.
You should have a pretty big list by now. It’s time to sift out the gold.
Drilling Down
In this step of the process, we’ll want to drill down to pull out the subjects that will lend themselves to having the best level of success. At this stage we want to cut our list down to just 5 or fewer subjects.
We want to make sure that the subject we choose fits the business model we’re going to follow. This is an important step in the process and you need to be as impartial as possible. You might have your pet subjects that will be easier for you, but if they don’t meet these criteria, you need to be willing to either cut them, or adjust them.
Here are the criteria that your niche must meet. If you’re already working on a niche website, see how your chosen niche stacks up.
Not too big or too small. How do you assess that? As a rule, what I do is use the Google Keyword Research tool here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Type in your major terms and press submit. Your major search terms needs to attract at least an “average” search volume. You can see if they are “average” by holding your mouse over the green bar and looking at the words that pop up. Simple. If it’s any more than average, you need to start looking at the sub-niches within it. It’s likely that the topic is too broad if it’s above the “average” mark.
2) Have commercial interest. So it must have people spending money within that niche. More specifically people must be spending $50 or more on average. Small transactions are not normally conducted online and people normally don’t have much motivation to research, or look for the best deals. Stick to subjects that have decent transactional value. Sure, knitting might be an OK niche, but the transaction costs are too low, and you’ll never make much money from it. Microsoft have a largely unknown tool that detects commercial intention of particular keywords or phrases. Now this isn’t to be treated as gospel, but it’s certainly a really useful guide. Don’t despair if a few of your major keywords come up non-commercial.
However, take that as a warning and dig deeper.
See: http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/oci.aspx
The term “golf putting” came up with a commercial intention with a score of 0.755, which is pretty good. As always, common sense should prevail over such tools.
3) Has plenty of available, largely evergreen content.You want to make sure your chosen niche has lots you can write about. Then you want to make sure that what you can write about doesn’t quickly go out of date. For example, you don’t want to create a website around something that rapidly changes. While new putters will come out, it’s not as dynamic as developing a site around say, iPods, for example. Whatever content you can write should make money for you for years.
4) Isn’t risky. I personally wouldn’t recommend developing a site that could have legal implications for you. Think carefully about the implications of covering a subject where you’re giving advice that could have serious negative effects on someone’s life if you are not an expert (and insured) on that subject. The health and finance industries come to mind.
5) Has a learning curve. If the subject you’re looking at has a learning curve, then people will be researching online and they’ll have problems you can solve or educate them on.
6) Has affiliate programs. This is important because if the subject has no affiliate programs on the topic, we can’t monetize one of our prongs. Plus, it’s an indication that the market is not commercial enough. You can search our directory here for affiliate programs in your niche.
7) No biz op. It may be obvious for some, but under no circumstances should you create a site around the subject of home businesses or how to make money online. For some reason, this is the first thing people jump into. It’s the most crowded, cut throat, unforgiving market you can choose. Remove it from your list immediately.
As you’ve run all your niches through this filter, hopefully you’ll still have a couple left. Now we make our final decision on which one we’re going to pursue. Think of it like the grand final of “Niche Idol.”
Detailed Analysis
It’s now time to do some final, more detailed analysis on our top 5 (or fewer). We’re going to look at 3 factors in particular. These are competition, monetization potential and difficulty. This can take a little time to complete, but it’s worth the analysis.
Competition
First, let’s look at the competition levels. I’ve created a little tool to help you here. For each of your top 5 finalists, do the following:
Go to the Google Keyword Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Type in your major keyword again, but ensure you have the “Use synonyms” check box checked.
Sort by Average Search Volume (so click on the blue link that says, “Average Search Volume”).
Grab the top 10 keywords by clicking the “Add” link to the right of each keyword. Then download a CSV or text version of this.
Go to this little tool:
Type in each of those 10 words using the default settings. This will launch a window showing a Google search result. What this does is show how many pages are highly optimized for those terms. In other words, the number of people you’ll need to topple to get in front of people searching on those keywords.
Look at the section that says: Results 1 - 10 of about X
Record that X value. If the screen looks blank, then there are no results, which is a great sign.
So do that for the top 10 keywords of each of your final niche top 5. Then add up the total of number of search results shown for each niche.
The lower the number, the less the competition. Obviously less is better.
Monetization Potential
To analyze the top niches further, we want to look at the monetization potential. In particular, we want to look at two factors. The first factor is the raw demand. In this case, it’s search volume.
To get this, return to the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Type in your major keyword again and ensure you have the “Use synonyms” check box checked.
Sort by Average Search Volume (so click on the blue link that says, “Average Search Volume”).
Grab the top 10 keywords by clicking the “Add” link to the right of each keyword. Then download a CSV or text version of this.
Now have a look at the green bar. Roughly guess and score the amount of green on that bar for each keyword between 1 and 10, with a score of 5 for a half green bar.
Record this against each of those top 10 keywords and total them up. This will give you a score for raw demand for each niche. Now we’re going to look at the commercial value of the niche.
We do that by looking at each of the keywords and how much people are paying per click to advertise on Google AdWords against this keyword. We can see this by using the dropdown box labeled, “Choose columns to display:”. Show the Estimated Avg. CPC.
It should now show the average cost per click that people are paying to rank number 1-3 on that keyword in the AdWords advertising system. This gives us an idea of the commercial value of those keywords. The higher those costs are, the more valuable they are to people and potentially, the more money you can make.
Now, we don’t have to pay that money, but someone is, which demonstrates how valuable the market is. If you want to give yourself a fright, try it out for the keyword “insurance”. 
So again, total the CPC for each keyword to give a total for each niche. You can now compare each niche against one another for commercial value.
Difficulty
This part is simple. I want you to do a personal assessment of how difficult you think it will be to tackle that niche. For example, you might be intimately familiar with one of the niches in contrast to another one that you have no idea about. Obviously the one you’re familiar with is going to be less difficult to tackle.
Also take into account how difficult you think it will be to create a product (How available are experts on that subject?) and develop content for that subject too. These are all important factors.
Now you need to give each of your finalist niches a score for its difficulty factor. A high score means an easier niche. A low score means it’s more difficult.
Final selection
Hopefully by now you’ll have scores against each of your niche finalists in competition, demand, commercial value and difficulty. Now I’m not going to say you can simply add up the results and you’ll have a winner. Some factors are more important than others here.
For example, a niche might be a winner on the analysis, but simply impossible to cover. I challenge you to get out of your comfort zone, but if you’re simply scared out of your mind, then there’s no point pursuing the topic because you’re probably not going to work hard on it.
You need to take a good look at the scores and decide for yourself what looks the most attractive. It’s your decision. Embrace what the data is telling you, but also use your gut feel. Give it a few days to work through your subconscious and go with the one that your mind gravitates to. It’s probably telling you the right answer.
Once you’ve decided, don’t look back. Congratulations, you have the topic for your new online business. It’s time to begin work!
In our next article, we’re going to look at “The Plan”. This section will outline the specific tools and procedures you’ll need to move forward on your new project. It’s exciting stuff as we’ll be putting together the infrastructure to make the $1000 a month a reality, but be prepared to spend a little money to set this up.
Article Series
This article is part of a series. Other published articles in this series so far
are shown below:
1. How To Make $1000 a Month Online From Scratch
2. The Required Mindset for Online Success
Albert
What Are CPA Affiliate Programs?
The internet offers numerous affiliate programs that make it possible for one to generate a nominal source of income. Some of the types of affiliate programs found on the internet today are CPA, CPC, CPM and CTR. One of the affiliate programs, CPA is the acronym for cost per action. Pay per click affiliate program is another name for CPA.
This affiliate program is basically an online advertising payment model where payment is based on qualifying actions by the visitors like sales and registrations. These programs usually provide banners, buttons, text descriptions and other advertising means to generate action from the visitor, therefore making you money.
The word action in these programs generally defines some sort of conversion in the transaction. The most common conversions, as mentioned, are sales and registrations. However, deals that are based only on clicks are not included in this program as deals that take place through clicks are generally categorized under cost per click.
In fact, it can be considered that the cost per action model is opposite to the cost per impressions model while the cost per click model lies somewhere in between. In the CPA model, it is the publisher who takes most of the risk as the commission here is dependent on good conversion rate from both the website and the advertiser’s creative units. This is unlike the CPM and CPC models where the publisher is not under as much of a risk.
There are several options for those interested in cost per action affiliate programs. The publishers with excess of an inventory usually opt for nonstandard offers. There are sites that specialize in incentive programs; and these sites are capable of offering CPA pricing on different leads while keeping caveats of incentivized traffic in mind. However, affiliate marketing is today considered to be the most used form of performance based pricing. In this program, the merchants and advertisers can determine the action they intend to reward and the amount they are willing to pay for it.
A typical CPA affiliate program can be seen as an offer site that appears before the surfer is reverted to the actual site he or she wants to visit. The site usually has some kind of offer or service wherein the visitor may be compelled to fill out a form or click on a link. The process is called the action that the visitor must take in order for the publisher to get paid. On completing an action, the website owner that’s affiliated with the CPA program pays the affiliate. This calculation is done based on the number of people who visit these affiliated programs.
You can generate a substantial income through CPA affiliate programs. If done properly, making money with CPA programs can be very rewarding.
Albert
How To Create Strong Passwords
As a small business owner, you can’t afford to have your identity or business information stolen. Using the internet to help run your business is absolutely necessary, but being lax about the passwords you use on banking, hosting and other business sites is short-sighted and dangerous.
So, what makes a good, strong password, one that a hacker is unlikely to discover? We all know not to use our children or pet’s name. In addition, don’t use any word in the dictionary, and refrain from using common words with numbers at the beginning or end of them (like 25melon or george153) as your password.
On systems that ask you to change your password every 30 days, don’t re-use passwords you’ve used in the past. Even if a site does not require you to change your password monthly, it’s a good idea to change it every few months anyway.
When creating a password, use 7 or 8 characters, and a combination of alphabetical characters (A to Z), numerical characters (0 to 9), and symbols. Using upper and lower case letters makes it even stronger.
For instance, TiMp39AyCgI is a great password. How in the world would I remember such a complicated password?
* TIMP stands for “this is my password”
* 39 was the year my mother was born
* AYCGI stands for “and you can’t get it”
See? It can be easy to create and remember strong passwords if you just get a little creative.
Finally, don’t store your passwords in a file on your PC. If your PC is compromised by hackers via the internet, or if your computer is stolen, people can easily find and open that file, and steal all your passwords in one fell-swoop. If you must create a file on your PC to store your passwords, password-protect THAT file with a strong password; or better yet, encrypt the file.
And remember, if you ever have to give any of these passwords to employees or contractors, change them as soon as the employee or contractor no longer needs to use them.
Want to test your password to see if it’s strong enough? Use this password tester
And here I have a password manager for you - Free download!
Albert
Testimonials Boost Direct Mail Response Rates
Correct me if I am wrong, but there is nothing more powerful in a business-to-business sales letter than a credible testimonial from a person in your prospect’s peer group.
Testimonials are valuable because they say what you cannot. If you say it, you’re boasting. If a satisfied client says it, they are applauding. Here are some tips on using testimonials to make your sales letter pitches more plausible–and profitable.
1. Don’t write your own
I have a standing policy never to write testimonials for others to sign. I don’t put words in a client’s mouth. That’s because real testimonials have an authentic sound to them that you cannot reproduce with your own pen. The only change I make to testimonials is to correct typos and grammatical mistakes that would otherwise embarrass the person making the testimonial.
2. Attribute the testimonials fully
There may actually be a J. K. in Wyoming but I do not know him, and neither do your prospects. Your testimonials carry the most credibility when they are attributed to a person by name, and include that person’s job title and company. Prospects check up on us direct mail marketers, you know. I recently landed a contract with a client who, before retaining my services, visited my online testimonials page, clicked on one of the company links, and asked to speak to the person who had given the testimonial.
3. Match your testimonials with your target audience
Ideally, you should have an arsenal of testimonials at your disposal for every kind of tactic and target audience. The best sales letters use testimonials that match the industry, business challenge and job title of the prospect. Collect testimonials about your product quality, customer service, response times, professionalism, value for money and so on. Then pick the testimonial that matches your selling proposition, offer and audience.
For example, the best testimonial to use when targeting dentists who buy continuing education courses online is one from a dentist from your prospect’s city (or state or province) who was extremely satisfied when buying online continuing education courses from you.
4. Ask permission
This goes without saying, which, in English, means I am going to say it. Always get written permission from your clients and suppliers to use their testimonials in sales letters, collateral and online.
5. Turn compliments into testimonials
You don’t have to solicit testimonials if your customers regularly say or write nice things about you, which I imagine is the case. Simply ask their permission to quote what they have already said.
Albert
Blog Marketing - How to Use Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is an excellent marketing tool to drive traffic to your online presence - whether it is a website or a blog. But, it must be done in a planned-out manner. Following are three things to keep in mind when you use blog commenting to drive traffic to your website/blog.
Choose Blogs in Your Niche
Select a list of blogs in your niche that you want to start commenting on. Take the time to research and gather a list of 10, 15 or 20 that you can regularly interact with.
It’s important to choose relevant blogs because they will not just drive traffic, but they will drive relevant traffic. And, this is what blog marketing is all about. For example, if you’re a scientific writer, you’d hang out (eg, post comments to) those kinds of blogs.
How does blog commenting lead to sales? In short, referrals, builds name brand recognition and builds a body of work you can show to potential clients (especially if blog posting is one of your services as a freelance writer).
Target Well-Ranked Blogs
The main reason to comment is to get traffic. Where are you going to find traffic? At well-ranked blogs.
If you have problems trying ot figure out which blogs are getting good traffic, use the following tech tools: Alexa.com, Technorati.com, Page Rank and Statbrain.com Check the status of each blog you’re thinking of using on each of these and you’ll soon find yourself with a list of highly ranked blogs to work with.
Leave Meaningful Comments
This is perhaps the most important tips. Many blog commentors in essence spam other blogs. And increasingly, spam is being thought of not just as some weirdo posting Viagra ads, but as those posts that add nothing to the conversation at hand, eg “Nice post! Visit my site at thisismysite.com”
One of the best posts I’ve ever read on the subject of blog commenting is by Jennifer, the blogger at CatalystBlogger.blogspot.com The title of that post Don’t Be a Comment Whore: Attract Traffic, Not Annoyance.
In it, she lays out proper blog commenting etiquette. She sums up the post by writing, “Leaving comments isn’t just about getting your link up in as many places as possible. It’s also about introducing yourself to a community. Make sure you pick the right community, put your best foot forward, and avoid being promotional. Think quality rather than quantity, and grow your audience over time–and you’re sure to see success.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Blog commenting is an excellent blog marketing tool - if it’s used correctly.
Albert
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